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Member of Parliament
(MP) in the United Kingdom Robert John Blackman today called upon the Central
government to implement the resolution unanimously passed by the Indian
Parliament to liberate parts of Jammu and Kashmir illegally occupied by
Pakistan.

He said it was the
only solution to the vexed Kashmir problem, a bone of contention between India
and Pakistan since 1947.

“First of all, occupied parts of
Jammu and Kashmir should be liberated from the yoke of Pakistan to restore the
pre-1947 position of the state and then make the entire region an integral part
of democratic India is the only solution to restore lasting and sustainable
peace in South Asia,” Blackman, who is visiting J&K for the first time,
told The Tribune. He especially mentioned the resolution passed by the Indian
Parliament in this regard.

On February 22, 1994, Parliament
had unanimously passed a resolution to liberate areas occupied by Pakistan. It
was clearly resolved in the resolution that “the State of Jammu & Kashmir
has been, is and shall be an integral part of India and any attempts to
separate it from the rest of the country will be resisted by all necessary
means; Pakistan must vacate the areas of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir,
which they have occupied through aggression”.

Nearly 22 years have passed but
no progress has been made to implement the resolution, said the UK MP who
belongs to the Conservative Party and represents Harrow East since 2010. He
hoped that the incumbent government headed by Narendra Modi would take some
steps to implement the resolution.

When asked about the solution to
the Kashmir problem, the MP, popularly known as Bob Blackman, said accession of
J&K with the Indian Union was full and final. “There is no further scope
for any debate on Kashmir’s relations with India. Like other states, J&K is
an integral part of India,” he said and mentioned that in 2015, he along with
some other members of UK Parliament had participated in Accession Day on
October 26.

Later, addressing a programme
organised by Press Club of Jammu, Bob said the Pakistani diaspora had launched
a vicious campaign against India in Britain as far as Kashmir was concerned.
“The Pakistani diaspora has been reflecting the propagandist picture on Kashmir
in the UK,” he said, adding that he along with some other MPs have started the
process to use diplomatic means to present the real picture of Kashmir in
Britain.

NEW DELHI: India may
finally exorcise its Bofors ghost of 30 years. After several years of
hard-nosed negotiations, which also saw the proposed deal being stalled for a
couple of years, the US government has finally submitted an over $700 million
offer for India to acquire 145 M-777 ultra-light howitzers.

Sources said the
Pentagon's "letter of offer and acceptance (LoA)", submitted to the
Indian defence ministry on Monday under the American foreign military sales
(FMS) programme, is now likely to lead to a government-to-government contract
within 180 days, Times of India reported on Tuesday.

"We are also at
an advanced stage of mutually deciding the Indian partners in the deal, who
will establish the AIT (assembly, integration and testing) facility here. While
the first lot will be delivered directly, the bulk of the 145 howitzers (manufactured
by BAE Systems) will be assembled in India over three years," said a
ministry source.The contract will entail a 30% offset clause, under which
around $210 million will be invested back into India.

The LoA for the
M-777s comes at a time when India is incensed with the US decision to sell
another eight F-16 fighters to Pakistan for $700 million. But that is unlikely
to impede the howitzer deal, with US having overtaken Russia, Israel and France
to turn India's largest arms supplierover the last four years. Just since 2007,
US has bagged Indian arms deals worth over $13 billion.

It was almost a
decade ago that the Indian Army had first demanded the induction of
155mm/39-calibre light-weight howitzers, which could be airlifted swiftly to
high altitude areas along the 4,057-km LAC with China. The air-mobile M-777s,
partly made of titanium, have a strike range of over 25-km.

The ultra-light
howitzers are meant to equip the new 17 Mountain Strike Corps, which is to be
fully raised with 90,274 troops at a cost of Rs 64,678 crore by 2021. The Army
has not been able to induct even one modern 155mm howitzer for over 30 years
because of recurring scandals, which began with the Swedish Bofors in the
mid-1980s and was then followed by South African Denel, Israeli Soltam and
Singapore Technology Kinetic's (STK) in later years.

The Indian Army has
advised its personnel not to reveal their personal details through email to
anyone without verifying the source of the mail. The advisory is in response to
reports of an email floating on the internet requesting for such details.

The Army
Headquarters has accordingly said, “A fraudulent e-mail is circulating in the
environment allegedly from webmaster, Indian Army, asking about the personal
details of NIC email ID users. The environment is hereby advised not to reply
to this email.”

It says “We are
upgrade and maintenance our Army database, If you have have NIC account please
download link 1 and fill this from (Sic). If you do not have NIC account please
open link 2 and open new user subscription. Enter Army number make your new NIC
account.”

The Army has called
the email a hoax and possibly dangerous.

The email then goes
on to provide two links,

http://webmail.nic.in/user
and

http://webmail.nic.in.
To provide further authenticity, the email gives the address of the Additional
Directorate General of Public Information in South Block, New Delhi along with
the webmaster’s email ID.

Sources inform that
off late there have been several attempts to gather personal as well as
official information on the internet and that several advisories are already in
place not to share any information on an email which appears to be suspicious
in nature.

A senior officer in
Western Command informed that following the attempts by certain elements to
befriend military personnel over social media platforms, a heightened alert
over cyber security is in place.

“Such phishing emails make it
clear that someone wants to get access to official email accounts in order to
access the classified information which would be available in the email
transactions. All officers and other ranks who handle such email accounts have
been duly cautioned and in addition firewalls are being strengthened to prevent
access or hacking,” he said.